Sunday, August 25, 2013

When Mrs Pankhurst sought to justify
WSPU militancy, she often did so by drawing attention to a double standard that
accepted men’s militancy but criticised women’s. “The smashing of windows is a
time-honoured method of showing displeasure in a political situation,” she
said, adding, “When Englishmen do it, it is regarded as an honest expression of
political opinion…when Englishwomen do it, it is treated as a crime.”

Mrs Pankhurst served a term in
prison in 1908 for inciting disorder during a deputation to the House of
Commons. After her release from Holloway, she insisted on the suffragettes’
right to be regarded as political prisoners , not common criminals, and directed WSPU members to refuse
to co-operate with prison rules unless this was granted. It was this demand
that led hundreds of women to adopt the hunger strike.

Yet the WSPU frequently argued that
the Government was prepared to grant male activists political status and tolerate
their violence and incitement of others to break the law. During her defence
speech in court on 21 May 1912 Mrs Pankhurst noted that while she was in prison
(in 1908) “for no greater offence than the issue of a handbill”, the Government
had received members of the Young Turkish Revolutionary Party. These men had
“killed and slain…while we women had never thrown a stone…we were imprisoned
while these political murderers were being feted by the very Government who
imprisoned us”.

The WSPU issued constant reminders
of the fact that the male franchise had been extended as a result of male
militancy.
In 1909, in the days leading up to Liberal MP Winston Churchill’s visit to the
city, Bristol suffragettes circulated
leaflets pointing out that the 1832 Bristol Riots had been a factor in men
obtaining the vote. It seems Bristol was prepared to riot again: at least the
female part of it. Churchill’s visit was the focus of days of demonstrations that
included window breaking and heckling him at meetings.

One
suffragette, Theresa Garnett from Leeds, even assaulted him when he arrived at Bristol
Temple Meads from London. She broke through the cordon of detectives surrounding
the politician and lunged at him with a whip, crying “Take that, you brute!” She
was sentenced to a month in Horfield Jail, where she went on hunger strike and
was forcibly fed. She protested by setting fire to her cell and was placed in
solitary confinement. Eleven days later she collapsed and was moved to the
prison hospital.

On 4 December 1913 Mrs Pankhurst was
arrested at Plymouth on her return to England from America, where she had been
on a speaking tour. She was released after a hunger strike and went to Paris,
where her daughter Christabel Pankhurst had fled the previous year to avoid arrest.
Mrs Pankhurst was rearrested in Dover on her return, and went on a hunger, thirst
and sleep strike. Protesting against her treatment, suffragettes burned a
timber yard at Devonport, near Plymouth, on 15 December. The message, “Our
reply to the torture of Mrs Pankhurst, and her cowardly arrest at Plymouth” was
left at the scene. A second card left at the scene read, “How dare you arrest
Mrs Pankhurst and allow Sir Edward Carson and Mr Bonar Law to go free?”

Edward Carson and Andrew Bonar Law
were leaders of the Ulster Unionist movement, which was pledged to resist Irish
Home Rule by force; the armed Ulster Volunteer Force was formed in 1912. When
the Bishop of London condemned suffragette militancy, Mrs Pankhurst protested,
“Why does he condemn militancy on the part of women while, presumably, he
approves (since he remains silent) the preparations made by men in Ireland to
destroy, not only property, but human life?”

The WSPU attempted to petition the King
on 21 May 1914, but were turned away from Buckingham Palace by cordons of police.
It was a violent affair, with mounted police charges and brutal treatment of the women by
police officers and men in the crowd. Sylvia Pankhurst called it a “day of
woman bating indeed”. Mrs Pankhurst was arrested and taken to Holloway. She was
released after a five day hunger and thirst strike. Sixty six women and two men
were also arrested, and when they appeared in court the next morning there were
noisy demonstrations inside and outside, and eight more arrests were made. The protests
continued over the next few days. Pictures were slashed at the National
Gallery, a mummy case broken at the British Museum, and a portrait of the King
in the Royal Scottish Academy was damaged.

Yet, as Mrs Pankhurst pointed out, while
the King refused to receive militant women, on 24 July 1914 he received a
deputation of militant men led by Edward Carson during a conference at Buckingham Palace to discuss the
situation in Ireland. Members of Sylvia Pankhurst’s East End Suffrage
Federation picketed outside with posters saying “The King must call a
conference on Votes for Women”.

The King did not call a conference
on votes for women, and the WSPU continued to protest about the double
standard. Men, Mrs Pankhurst said, “have decided that it is entirely right and
proper for men to fight for their liberties and their rights, but that it is
not right and proper for women to fight for theirs…Well, the Suffragettes
absolutely repudiate that double standard of morals.”

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About Me

I live in Bristol and I write historical fiction and non-fiction. In 2006 I completed an MA in English Literature with the Open University, specialising in eighteenth century literature.
My historical novels are set in the eighteenth century. To date they are: To The Fair Land (2012); and the Dan Foster Mystery Series comprising Bloodie Bones (2015), The Fatal Coin (2017) and The Butcher’s Block (2017). Bloodie Bones was a winner of the Historical Novel Society Indie Award 2016 and a semi-finalist for the M M Bennetts Historical Fiction Award 2016.
The Bristol Suffragettes (non-fiction), a history of the suffragette campaign in Bristol and the south west which includes a fold-out map and walk, was published in 2013.